The Equilibrium of Squirrels

It's not one of those trick titles this time, it's really a tribute to squirrels :)

There might be a handful of people out there who don't like them, think of them as vermin, but most people love to watch squirrels.  All those grunty little chittering noises and the way they freeze up like statues for no apparent reason (Did I leave the kettle on?).  And they scamper, scampering is just the cutest thing ever.

Squirrels are aerial masters and natural born show folk, performing gravity defying feats with the greatest of ease, the greatest of confidence.  I admire squirrels for those reasons, but lately there's a new lesson learned from Little Chunk, Flicky and all the rest.

We've tried out many different types of bird feeders in the last few months, this type of sock is common these days, but they're no good.  I put them out and the next day, they have been ripped to shreds by the squirrels; those were abandoned early on.  I looked at squirrel proof feeders at the store, but my goal was never to deny the squirrels, rather to discourage vandalizing.

After some trial and error, Clyde and I have settled on a system of one gallon milk jugs, we go through about one a week, so that's the most convenient.  We make a new feeder by carving out two of the side panels, sliding a wooden skewer diagonally across the bottom and threading wire through the top for a handle.  Keeping feeders clean is a priority, hence the revolving jug method.

As you can see, there is plenty of easy access for all.  Initially, we thought the squirrels to be greedy, that they would empty the feeders every day, but that was not true.  Just like people, those squirrels only wanted what they thought they couldn't have, those socks were forbidden fruit.

Little Chunk visits the feeder everyday, several squirrels do along with a great quantity of birds.  Now that it's just sitting there free for the taking, the squirrels are not being greedy.  They take what they need and leave the rest.

If a squirrel can find that balance so easily, why can't I?

#TwitizenCairn

I have mentioned before that I am Twittering more, perhaps even with a modicum of ease these days.  Not without help though, Holly Jahangiri being the most notable contributor to my curriculum in that regard.  Someone on BBT Cafe posted this link recently by Kristen Lamb, author of We Are Not Alone, about Twitter etiquette and protocol that was extremely useful to me as well.

We are back at this well because it is time for me to begin a re-edit of The Last Prospector, a more informed edit this time.  Sadly, this is still a DIY project because we just can't afford a professional, if I could, I would.  I do not think that I can do it better than they, but do it I must.

This time I have resources though, not flying as blindly as usual, and some concrete general instructions about the process of editing a book.  A generous man named Bob Sanchez, author of When Pigs Fly, looked over the first chapter and gave me notes; the first page alone was a revelation.   Many of the folks in the cafe contribute to Blood Red Pencil, and this site is a trove of practical editorial advice for any kind of writing.

And I have friends now, authors who have been here before who can pat me on the back in a comforting way when I sigh unhappily.  That alone is pretty great.

So what does this have to do with Twitter?  I have decided to tweet my editing experience, If Wil Wheaton can tweet himself watching A Christmas Story, so can I.

My TweetDeck (yes, this girl knows what TweetDeck is, so there) will be open whenever I'm working on the book.  It's my social media experiment; if I commit to it, engage in it and fling myself out into the Twitterverse, perhaps I will find the audience that Prospector deserves.

Perhaps not, I've been wrong a lot, in case you haven't noticed.  But even a failed experiment yields valuable wisdom, usually more than a successful one - I'm still hoping for success, it would be a nice change of pace.

So, here goes nothing once again!  Let's have some fun, let's start a conversation #TwitizenCairn.

Dear Bruce Jenner

Dear Bruce,

I intended to write about the other Bruce today, the one I like, Springsteen.  But you have been on my mind Bruce Jenner, so this one is for you.

May I just ask where your testicles are buried?  The three of you must have parted ways after your stunning appearance in the  '76 Olympics because the IOC would have noticed their absence.

This open letter is a gift to you, a glimpse into your future.  I am the ghost of Christmas future because I have lived what you are putting your children through right now.

Oh and, by the way, you disgust me.  You are spineless and weak willed sir, there is a word I keep thinking whenever I think of you, I shan't say it in this tasteful blog, but it is synonymous with 'cat'.

Have you noticed that your wife has ruined your relationships with all of your children? I don't watch you or your soulless family's programs, but I am neither blind nor deaf so I have seen with my own eyes how your grown sons have already left you.  Now there are two young girls, girls who still have a chance to be emotionally happy people - if you ever find the courage to fight for them that is.

Yep, Kris Jenner is a monster, I've known this all along, some things you can tell just by looking Bruce.  But you are a much worse variety of monster, the kind that everyone thinks is such a nice guy and it's a helluva an act.  I'm not buying it though.

As I've said, I lived this.  I watched my biological father allow his wives who weren't my mother to separate him from his children.  It hurts like hell Bruce, to know that your own father won't fight for you, doesn't care enough about you to take a stand about your welfare.

Here's the thing Bruce, Kris couldn't have done that without your permission and assistance.  You allowed her to get between you and your sons and now you allow her to turn your youngest girls into the newest Khardashian commodities.

Someone once said that the only thing required for evil to flourish was for good men to stand aside and do nothing.  Which kind of makes those men not 'good', eh?  You are evil too Bruce Jenner, evilly standing aside because you're too much of a (cat).

What are you afraid of?  That Kris will yell at you with words?  That is terrifying, WORDS!  There's just no defense from people who yell with words.  Oh wait, yes there is.  Be a man for once, use your words to tell her to shut it and take your children away from her.  BE A MAN BRUCE JENNER.

Let me tell you what happens if you continue to walk down the path of least resistance.  You will die old, broken and alone because you taught your children that it was easier to walk away.  So they walked away from you, that's what I did.

I've got news for all you half assed fathers out there, you who think that a sperm donation was the limit of your obligations to your children.  You are not entitled to the respect and affection of your progeny, those are earned.  You cannot spend your life making your children feel second best and expect those humans to forget all of you hurtful actions.

It's not too late Bruce, not at all.  It's never too late to stand up and be a man.  It's not too late to be a real father to all of your children, to not die alone.

This all very raw and blunt, but kind words don't work on the spineless, only a stinging slaps.  I want all the Khardashians to please go away and stop making America look so bad.  You can start by stopping Kris from prostituting your underage daughters and giving those children a normal, private life.

This is California Bruce Jenner, you have rights.  Especially you Bruce Jenner!  If you just stop being so weak.

Daddy is supposed to be strong, supposed to protect you.  When do you start being Daddy?

Start right now Bruce.

British Invasion

I am not an Anglophile, just so you know.  The word is defined as someone who is fond of or greatly admires England, which is broadly true of me.  And yet I'm still not an Anglophile.

But I do love the Brits, I love their sensibilities and their accents.  Those residents of the British Isles hit the accent jackpot, in my view, every street corner seems to have its own unique way of speaking and they all sound so melodic to me.

From a Pop culture standpoint, the U.K. has been a huge influence on me, from the Clash to Doctor Who, my tastes are very much informed by British imports.  But it is their television that I adore the most, that I am envious of, because it is far more interesting than what they give us over here.

I love that English actors look like real people; fat, bad teeth, old and hairless.  Not all of them of course, but you would be hard pressed to find one of those over-processed starlets with hair extensions and implants that proliferate on our screens.

Let's face it, if Doctor Who and Torchwood had been American creations, neither Billie Piper or Eve Myles would have made it past the audition.  Most likely, they would have been snickered at and given the number of a Beverly Hills dentist.

I don't feel that way, I love Eve Myles and her delightful gap, although I'm not as taken with Billie Piper's bum as the producers of Doctor Who think I should be.  It looks like a perfectly normal ass to me, but whatever.

Until the last few months, the BBC America has been my refuge from from the bland and over-puffed offerings of network programming.  The Beeb has given me so many wonderful things; Black Adder, Cracker, Luther, The Catherine Tate Show and the holiest of holies.

If any of my British readers know Philip Glenister, could you please tell him that I follow him on Twitter even though he has NEVER ONCE Twittered?  I'm still waiting, just in case :)

While I still watch more programs regularly on the BBCA than all four major American networks combined, it has been slipping.  The nature programs are still the finest to be found anywhere, but those dramas are really getting bad.  Copper was a disgusting thing, if you remember my kiddie porn rant about Shameless, just know that fury was born out of revulsion for Copper. Now it is just a slippery slope of increasing Americanization of their products, they are now embracing precisely what made me flee from homegrown products.

So I'm watching it less and much less likely to try something new they have to offer, the BBCA is no longer an entity deserving of trust, very sad.

Fortunately, the U.K. has many other things of interest, such as its citizens.  My British Facebook friends are a delight, sending me little slices of life via posts and pictures that make me feel like I could be right at home there.  My two favorite Brits happen to be bloggers (surprise!), I did a guest blog for one of them about local winter produce and the other recently wrote something very lovely about yours truly on her blog.

Caro and Anita-Clare are just two of the many fine British accents speaking on my wall these days, so it is becoming better than the Beeb in many ways.  See?  If you don't give me proper entertainment, I will go out and make my own.

Remember, I'm the one who got so irritated that I couldn't find a good story to read that I wrote my own.

There is one other very significant thing about Great Britain that needs mentioning, a thing I think about often although I really have about 10,000 things of more importance.  Living in California all my life, I am somewhat blase about all the iconic and well known sights here.  I have seen all of them many times; crossed over the Golden Gate Bridge, hiked Yosemite and even frolicked at the edge of the San Andreas fault.

But they've got something over there that tops all of those in my view, the most well known icon in human history and it's just sitting by the side of the road.

Can you imagine the daily commute to your job as an insurance adjuster, zipping past Stonehenge every day and grousing about the traffic??  How AWESOME would that be?

Naturally, I have a complaint.  Oh you guys are not getting off quite that easily, oh no.

As much as I love their speech, there has been a change, an un-melodic change.  More and more, I hear them replacing the 'th' sound in words with either a 'v' or 'f' sound.  With becomes wif, gather becomes gaver  and so on.

You know how it is when you're talking very fast and an unexpected glob of saliva has formed, threatening to spill out of your mouth in an indelicate way so you hurry up and try to slurp it back before anyone notices?

Yep, that's what it sounds like.  They sound like drooling idiots, literally drooling.

Let's make a deal, I will keep trying to get the idiot boys on this end to wear pants that fit properly and you guys get your kids to stop drooling in public.  Visualize world peace people, we can make this happen!

I do love you Britain, not your Paul McCartney worship though, feel free to keep the Beatles.  I'm from California, Brian Wilson and the Beach Boys forever.  But you gave us Vivienne Westwood and Winston Churchill too, for that I salute you.

Lasting Memories

Is it Saturday already?

I always hear it when they’re together, especially when they think I’m not listening.

I’m always listening harder when they think I’m not, it’s a mom thing.

The two of them laughing, they laugh so loud and easily

I say that I’m happy they’re friends, they retort NO and NUH UH as one

Just because we go shopping together, to the movies together

Does NOT mean we are ‘friends’ with eye rolls

Then I leave the room and the laughter starts again

Laughing at Mother’s foolish notions again

Their laughter is the soundtrack of my heart

One long lasting memory

Brianne

I think all you Travellers are pretty familiar with my obsession with Buffy the Vampire Slayer.  It is my favorite show of all time and I watch the reruns and reruns of reruns whenever possible.

There is one episode that I have only seen once though, when it was first aired and I've not watched it again since.  It's too hard to watch, it's too hard to see actors make-believing the tragedy we lived.  They were respectful, it's not that, but that episode happened to us.

I don't want to be writing this, I don't want to be dredging this up again.  I have resisted and said no, that this is our family pain and not to be grist for the community mill.  But it keeps coming back and it hurts, I want it to leave me alone and accept that I have accepted.

It won't get out of my head, so here I am showing you my deepest wound.

Joyce Summers died in that episode of Buffy, out of the blue from a brain aneurysm.  A tiny ninja assassin inside her brain.  That same assassin took the life of my oldest daughter many years ago, out of the same clear blue, with the same brutal efficiency.

It is a pain that never lessens, never goes away.  It is an ache that you learn to live with because there is no other choice.  It is the yardstick by which all other pain is measured.

Today is March 1st, the month of Brianne's birth and death.  She was just 12 years and 6 days old, when she died.  When we killed her.

Oh don't say that we didn't kill her, you who were there, because we did.  We made that choice for her, it is an ugly truth but it is the truth.  The doctors came to us and said we had to decide Brianne's fate, to keep her body functioning on machines or to stop her beautiful, courageous heart.

They said she wasn't going to be coming back to us, that her brain had died and all that was left was a shell. We chose to say good bye, we chose to donate her organs, we chose to kill Brianne.

I do not have the luxury of soft, easy, comforting words anymore.  People wonder why I am so blunt, it's because the time for pretense is long gone.  All that was left after Bri were pain and truth.  Life is too fucking short and the lies will not set you free.

I shared a video on my Facebook page on Valentine's Day.  A lovely little girl made the video for her best friend, a boy with a congenital heart defect.  It was incredibly touching and I understood that girl's pain, her best friend needed a heart.

Here's a fun fact about organ donation.  Just like body parts outside, body parts inside are not one size fits all.  No, those organs have to be roughly the same size, they have to come from a body of the same size.  So, if a 10 year old needs a new heart, someone else's baby has to die in order to provide.

As much as I want that boy to live, I don't want some other parents to go through what we did.

I don't regret donating Bri's organs, but of course I regret the choice.  I still don't know if it was the right one, I will probably never know.  Did we not give the universe a chance to give us a miracle?  It is a question that hounds me every moment of every day.

Brianne is the reason I am so intent on living, I live my life in her honor and I am brave because she made me so.  She is the reason I won't tolerate the lies that we tell to stop ourselves from being fulfilled, she is the reason I push so hard.

There isn't much time, there is never enough time.  It can be over so fast and then what, regret about a life not fully realized?

NO, I will not go quietly into that dark night.  I WILL NOT.

I will keep railing, rallying, fighting and crying, but I will not surrender to the pain.  I owe Brianne my very best, everyone in our family owes Brianne their very best, and it is a debt I intend to honor.

WANDERER Epilogue

Petra

She was supposed to be packing, but Walker found Pet sitting on her bed and watching the television with a sour expression.  She sighed heavily and asked, “Why do they insist on doing that?”

Walker chuckled and sat down beside her, “Because Gwendolyn is your name.  Your real name,” he added before Pet could retort.

The program she was watching was another documentary about Amos’ cave, about the amazing discovery and the amazing discoverers.  Every single time that Pet was featured, there was always a caption that read Gwendolyn “Pet” Brazil and that really irked her.  They all just called Nastassja Tass, and that was wholly unfair in Pet’s view.

But the discovery was big news, the biggest news of the new millennium many said.  It was the find of a lifetime, of several lifetimes, and its impact would be felt forever.  Because of that cave and the unlikely runes, a genuine conversation had started about the veracity of recorded history, the academics were now finally willing to admit that perhaps Christopher Columbus had not been the first.

But rocks don’t lie, they do not know how to lie and the rocks in California were saying that the Americas had never been undiscovered.  Evidence was piling up from all over the western hemisphere that ancient peoples not only knew the Americas existed, but traveled here frequently over the eons. 

A new talking head filled up the screen, causing Pet to roll her eyes in disgust and get back to packing.  As much as she liked the crackpots, Petra drew the line at the idiot with the crazy hair and leather pants who kept insisting that aliens from other planets had fashioned the carvings.  She did not have any use for someone who ignored the overwhelming evidence of human ingenuity and determination, someone who thought his own species incompetent and slavered over imaginary friends.

But everybody wanted in on the action, legal wars were already raging over the contents and Pet was happy to stay out of the fray.  To her mind, all that placer gold lining the streambed in the cave belonged to Rita Brandecker and her children, since they were just rocks and not pieces of the actual carvings.  But it was a lot of gold, an almost incomprehensible amount and the State was claiming ownership, trying to stick its hand into pockets it did not own.  There was a National Guard unit stationed at the site now to keep people out and even the U.N. was making a claim that the cave was a world heritage site. 

Pet could only agree, the cave did not belong to her, the Brandeckers or the State, it was the legacy of all Californians, of all the people in the world.  Only a handful of people had actually been inside, and the fact that all that gold was still there was a very telling sign that no other humans had entered that cave since the creators had left.  Pet and Tass knew they would only have one shot at the cave, to collect their data and celebrate their victory, because there was more in there than just gold and carvings.

Caves were isolated eco systems, there was biological gold in there too that needed protecting as much as the history.  They had been excruciatingly careful to not contaminate the site, from changing into sterile clothing and covering their shoes with plastic bags, the expeditioners had done their level best not to destroy in their zeal to discover.

There was a new framed photo on Pet’s desk, next to the photo of her and her parents in the cave near Oroville.  This family portrait had been taken by the cameraman from the Exploration Channel and getting Pet, Walker and all three Romeros into the well chamber at the same time was a very tight squeeze.  But they had managed, the five of them in front of the looming bear of gold, all smiling like crazed maniacs and holding tightly to each other.

Petra could no longer play at being the orphan, her parents might be long gone, but she had never been without family.  Strangers from all over the world had reached out to Pet, had supported and sustained her during her quest and were now all ridiculously proud of her accomplishment.  They had made room in their hearts for a maverick scientist who romanced rocks, making it known that Pet Brazil belonged to a family, the biggest family on planet Earth.

With her suitcase almost full, Walker handed her the final bundle and Pet gently buried the rubbing of Amos’ name, and two pictures.  Raymond Brazil, John Muir and Amos, the not forgotten gold miner, were going with Petra, they came all this way together and they would see it through to the end together.

Pet checked the time and asked, “Any word?”

Walker nodded, “She just texted Araceli, they’re on their way.”

Tass had been spending most of her currently limited free time with Fulstone, in between giving interviews and reviewing job offers.  There was a television show in the works that Tass would be hosting on the Exploration Channel, but there were other interesting choices to ponder too.  Pet did not want in on that action, she would always be there for support, research and occasional appearances, but had no desire to be in the spotlight more than she already was. 

There were books to write and lectures to give, but those would have to wait until after the wedding.  Pet was very excited to join her life to Walker’s, but that event wouldn’t happen for several months.  There was one last expedition to mount on behalf of Pet’s quest, an invitation no one had ever expected and the opportunity of a lifetime.  The CaveWomen were honored guests and had even been allowed the courtesy of bringing a third.

There were so many people who helped the CaveWomen, so many people to be thanked, that the choice could have been a difficult one.  But it was the easiest decision, the most obvious decision for both Pet and Tass, because there was but one person who was owed the largest debt.  Araceli Romero had taken over for the parents who left Gwendolyn behind, she had raised three children by herself and still ran the business of CaveWomen, Inc.

If Pet could have stuffed Chuy into her bag, he would be coming to Jordan with them.  Pet closed her bag and zipped it up tight, her foster brother would just have to wait for the pictures.  His mother and sisters were going to the Promised Land, flying first class in Hollywood style to the dusty desert in the Middle East where another group of ingenious humans carved a culture out of the rocks.

Petra was calling Petra home.